England coach has paid the price for wanting a piece of the celebrity action

By Paul Hayward

12:01AM BST 23 Apr 2002

SO let's rewind the screaming tape of the last few days and ask whether any of us is better or wiser after a week in the School for Scandal.

The one constant in the Sven-Goran Eriksson-Ulrika Jonsson saga was comedy: jokes - some good, some pathetic - wrapped around a plot that belonged in a comic novel about Medialand, which is what dear old England should be calling itself these days.

Broadsheet, tabloid, television, radio: seldom has the great consuming monster who shouts the daily odds been so out of step with the average punter.

The British public's response to this sultry tale of rich consenting adults answering the most fundamental call of nature has been "Ha, ha" and then "So what?"

The nightmare scenario is that a spurned Ms Jonsson sells her story on the eve of the World Cup and the paparazzi try to break into the England camp disguised as geisha girls. In that instance players and staff would circle the wagons and the country would end up grappling not only with Argentina and Sweden but its own insatiable appetite for trivia.

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Here it is, condensed: Chief spin doctor and Blair bruiser introduces England coach to television celeb famous for being famous. Steam rises. The subsequent fly-past of revelatory and toe-curling "detail" includes lots of transparently made-up "quotes" and plenty of speaking into intercoms. The Metropolitan Police end up supplying five officers to protect Nancy Dell'Olio (Sven's regular girlfriend) on a three-yard walk to her car.

The England manager, meanwhile, talks of having to use "violence, more or less" to reach his own vehicle unmolested. Take it from a sportswriter: if Eriksson, in pre-match press conferences, declines to say whether he's going to play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 in a friendly match the following day, he's hardly likely to stop on the pavement and discuss the relative physical merits of the two beauties adorning his life.

So what have we learnt? That the British are still hopelessly hung up about sex.

Also that legions of us live vicariously through celebrities we will never know. Our fascination with money and power makes village idiots of us all. There we all are, gawping at the folks on the hill with their houses in Regents Park, their forgettable appearances on Shooting Stars. But there is another cause for this particular feeding frenzy, and it has to do with the dramatic change in Eriksson's role in English life; his willingness to fly ever closer to fame's roasting sun.

Some of us still remember vividly the day England's first foreign manager arrived from Rome. So cool was he that there seemed to be dry ice swirling around his much-scrutinised shoes. The line was that he had no desire to add to the country's festering stock of publicity-seeking celebs.

He was a "football man" (you heard this phrase over and over again), here from International Rescue to do a number on an ailing football team who were bottom of their World Cup qualifying group. And so it was, until success persuaded those around him that the Eriksson "name" was less a set of letters on a tracksuit than a "brand" which could be used to boost his income above the £2 million-plus per season the Football Association were paying him.

Nobody could seriously suggest that Eriksson's problem with Ulrika Jonsson started the day he met Mark McCormack at a party and signed for IMG; or at the point where he joined the telephone directory of after-dinner speakers, celebrity endorsers, conference hosters and television and radio voice-over jocks who make up a company called Performing Artistes.

But Eriksson is on their roster, along with half my colleagues in television sport. While we're at it, we might as well discount the idea that there is any connection between the fiasco of the last few days and Eriksson's deal with UBI Soft, who make the "Sven-Goran Eriksson's World Cup Manager" video game, or the CD collection of "inspirational music" or the books.

No: no connection at all, except that it's Eriksson's drift into the boot-filling world of outside commercial work which led him into a district of society where Ulrika Jonsson happened to be, along with several squadrons of reporters who are paid to stay out until 3am to find out who's sleeping with who.

Eriksson's analytical powers are legendary, so it shouldn't take him long to work out that with the money and the adulation comes scrutiny and intrusion. Until access to the England coach improved after some grumbling in the press box, football writers were developing the uncomfortable sense that the only way to get close to him was to turn up at the launch of a new PlayStation game or mobile phone.

The FA have turned into a deal-making factory. It is a world of brands, logos and big-money partnerships with blue chip sponsors. No harm in that, but Eriksson has plainly caught the mood. These days it's almost always "outside interests" which bring down England managers.

When Kevin Keegan walked away, Terry Venables was kept off the short-list because it was said (via nods and winks) that he had "too many distractions" off the pitch. This was partly a reference to a business venture in Spain. El Tel must be giggling into his San Miguel. Glenn Hoddle was felled by religion, or rather by his inability to keep his spiritual musings, plus Eileen Drewery, to himself.

Eriksson will survive this, but he has been given a valuable warning about worlds within worlds.

The FA were so proud and grateful to have bundled Lazio's manager on to a flight out of Rome that there was never any question of imposing preconditions on someone who was regarded as one of Europe's finest coaches.

But now that football has made its crazy surge from the back pages to the front, the time has come to tie England managers to clauses limiting their capacity to accept outside work. Some might wonder why a man who earns £2 million-plus a season for doing a part-time job feels the need to double his income by plastering his name all over things in shops.

Again, the point we come back to is that people in football are no longer content just to kick balls around or pick teams. They want to be in the menagerie of popular culture, with its huge rewards and its attendant personal costs.

In that sense it seems fitting that Eriksson fell foul of one of the women most likely to land him with a 24-hour chaperon of snoopers and would-be inquisitors. He has chosen not to complain. Nor could he. The same media conduits that publicised his soothing CD and his video games are now showing him life on the other side of that same street.

The question is not, "Do you still love Nancy?" but, "Is celebrity life worth the avalanche of manure?" Rich enough already, and surely much wiser, Eriksson needs to return to being a "football man" in time for the World Cup.